3of4A view of the Comcast/NBC logo between the elevators on Wednesday, June 29, 2016, at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Sunnyvale, Calif.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

4of4A view of the outside of the building housing Comcast on Wednesday, June 29, 2016, at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Sunnyvale, Calif.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

While Olympic athletes compete for gold medals in Rio de Janeiro next month, Comcast NBCUniversal will try to prove it can compete for TV viewers now and in the future.

Comcast plans an all-out blitz, using technology partially developed and coordinated by its research and development center in Sunnyvale, to broadcast the Summer Olympics, which start Aug. 5.

The coverage will include about 4,500 hours of live-streaming video of every event, from basketball and beach volleyball to javelin and judo, in addition to the telecast on NBC’s stable of broadcast and pay television networks.

Comcast will reach out to younger viewers, who are increasingly ignoring traditional pay TV services, by distributing shareable social media content through online news site BuzzFeed and mobile app Snapchat. NBC will also distribute virtual reality and ultra-high-definition video.

The Games in Rio will be a chance for Comcast to show how it can survive a shifting media landscape, according to Phil Swann, a TV analyst.

“This is their opportunity to show Wall Street and consumers that it’s a brand-new Comcast, that they’re not just your old cable company that you’ve come to hate,” he said.

Comcast’s Preston Smalley said the 2016 Olympics will have 34 sports and up to 41 events happening simultaneously.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said the Olympics coverage will be a showcase for the company’s progress toward becoming a technology and entertainment company.

“It’s really hard to change a 50-year-old company and try to make it really relevant,” Roberts said recently in San Francisco during a preview of NBC’s plans for the Olympics. “But I think we’re inching toward it. And innovation has to be the heart of who you are.”

But keeping everything running smoothly will be a challenge. Preston Smalley, an executive with Comcast’s 300-employee Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Sunnyvale, said the 2016 Olympics will have 34 sports and up to 41 events happening simultaneously. Far more hours will be live-streamed than at the Summer Olympics in London four years ago.

Swann, who edits and publishes TVPredictions.com, a news and analysis site, is skeptical that Comcast can pull it off without the technical glitches that plague 90 percent of live streams of popular shows, ranging from the Super Bowl to “Game of Thrones.” Picture freezes and other access issues are familiar stumbling blocks.

“The technology can't handle any event with significant traffic, and many people will try to stream the Olympics at work, which will create significant traffic,” Swann said. Comcast officials are confident that the technology will work, based on experience with other big sporting events.

The Rio Olympics are the first Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996 to occur in or near a U.S. time zone, meaning NBC can broadcast more events live for an American audience. NBC has long faced criticism for airing prerecorded coverage long after an event has occurred, especially in the Pacific time zone.

Making things more challenging, U.S. adults are watching less TV than in the past, as viewers shift to watching shows on demand or on their DVRs, said Glenn Enoch, a senior vice president of audience insights for the Nielsen research firm.

But he said the viewing of sports, news and reality shows as they’re broadcast remains strong, although it is fragmented among devices that include main TV screens and mobile devices. According to Artie Bulgrin, ESPN’s senior vice president of research and analytics, 91 of the top 100 most-watched shows of that type last year were sports events.

Comcast/NBC Olympic menus that show up on sports apps are also on display at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Sunnyvale.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

That explains the big bet that Philadelphia’s Comcast, which completed its $30 billion acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2013, has placed on the Olympics. In 2014, Comcast spent $7.75 billion to extend its exclusive deal for the U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympic Games through 2032. It spent $4.38 billion for rights to Summer and Winter Olympic Games from 2014 to 2020.

Engineers in Sunnyvale have beefed up an NBC Sports mobile app introduced for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The app will include new features allowing viewers to easily find the sports, athletes and countries they want to watch, along with relevant statistics and biographical data.

Comcast is also rolling out a Rio Olympics guide on the platform to help viewers sort through its 6,755 total hours of streaming and televised programing. The guide will include pop-up onscreen reminders when their favorite athletes or sports are about to start and a list of “must see” highlight videos.

It will also be accessible from the NBC Sports Olympic app. However, Comcast’s 4,500 hours of streaming coverage offered through the app will be available only to its subscribers or those of pay TV services that carry NBC’s USA Network.

That may not help Comcast attract the “cord cutters” and “cord nevers,” viewers who don’t subscribe to any pay TV services. Hence the partnerships with BuzzFeed and Snapchat. Buzzfeed will work on short behind-the-scenes video and other stories such as sprinter Allyson Felix’s collection of Michael Jordan shoes, said Andrew Gauthier, a BuzzFeed executive producer, and some of those projects will be shared through Snapchat.

“You can see (swimmer) Nathan Adrian consume a giant plate of pancakes, one of his favorite cheap foods,” Gauthier said. “It’s almost like your best friend is attending the Games and you’re able to witness it in this very special, intimate way.”

The NBC Olympics website will also offer free highlights to nonsubscribers, and the main NBC network is broadcast free over the air. And Comcast will be heavily promoting its cloud-based Xfinity X1 platform, which gives its cable TV subscribers an Internet-connected set top box with a voice-activated remote control that can access online video along with standard cable fare.

Analyst Paolo Pescatore of CCS Insight said Comcast’s X1 technology has turned around a decline in subscribers, with 53,000 new customers signing on in the first quarter compared with a loss of 8,000 during the same quarter last year.

“So this latest move will help fuel further subscriber growth and drive users to sign up to higher-value packages,” Pescatore said. “But Comcast should not stop at just the Olympics.”

Offering ultra-high-definition programing could help push Comcast ahead of its competitors, Pescatore said.